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This paper discusses the possibility to use and apply the ideas of theWave BasedMethod, which has been developed especially for the steady–state acoustic areas, i.e. to solve the Helmholtz type boundary value problems in a bounded domain, in non–acoustics areas such as steady–state temperature propagation, calculation of the velocity potential function of a liquid flux, calculation of the light irradience in a liver tissue/tumor, etc.

In this paper we investigate the use of the sharp function known from functional analysis in image processing. The sharp function gives a measure of the variations of a function and can be used as an edge detector. We extend the classical notion of the sharp function for measuring anisotropic behaviour and give a fast anisotropic edge detection variant inspired by the sharp function. We show that these edge detection results are useful to steer isotropic and anisotropic nonlinear diffusion filters for image enhancement.

In the ground vehicle industry it is often an important task to simulate full vehicle models based on the wheel forces and moments, which have been measured during driving over certain roads with a prototype vehicle. The models are described by a system of differential algebraic equations (DAE) or ordinary differential equations (ODE). The goal of the simulation is to derive section forces at certain components for a durability assessment. In contrast to handling simulations, which are performed including more or less complex tyre models, a driver model, and a digital road profile, the models we use here usually do not contain the tyres or a driver model. Instead, the measured wheel forces are used for excitation of the unconstrained model. This can be difficult due to noise in the input data, which leads to an undesired drift of the vehicle model in the simulation.

One approach to multi-criteria IMRT planning is to automatically calculate a data set of Pareto-optimal plans for a given planning problem in a first phase, and then interactively explore the solution space and decide for the clinically best treatment plan in a second phase. The challenge of computing the plan data set is to assure that all clinically meaningful plans are covered and that as many as possible clinically irrelevant plans are excluded to keep computation times within reasonable limits. In this work, we focus on the approximation of the clinically relevant part of the Pareto surface, the process that consititutes the first phase. It is possible that two plans on the Parteto surface have a very small, clinically insignificant difference in one criterion and a significant difference in one other criterion. For such cases, only the plan that is clinically clearly superior should be included into the data set. To achieve this during the Pareto surface approximation, we propose to introduce bounds that restrict the relative quality between plans, so called tradeoff bounds. We show how to integrate these trade-off bounds into the approximation scheme and study their effects.

Denote by G = (N;A) a complete graph where N is the set of nodes and A is the set of edges. Assume that a °ow wij should be sent from each node i to each node j (i; j 2 N). One possibility is to send these °ows directly between the corresponding pairs of nodes. However, in practice this is often neither e±cient nor costly attractive because it would imply that a link was built between each pair of nodes. An alternative is to select some nodes to become hubs and use them as consolidation and redistribution points that altogether process more e±ciently the flow in the network. Accordingly, hubs are nodes in the graph that receive tra±c (mail, phone calls, passengers, etc) from di®erent origins (nodes) and redirect this tra±c directly to the destination nodes (when a link exists) or else to other hubs. The concentration of tra±c in the hubs and its shipment to other hubs lead to a natural decrease in the overall cost due to economies of scale.

An efficient mathematical model to virtually generate woven metal wire meshes is
presented. The accuracy of this model is verified by the comparison of virtual structures with three-dimensional
images of real meshes, which are produced via computer tomography. Virtual structures
are generated for three types of metal wire meshes using only easy to measure parameters. For these
geometries the velocity-dependent pressure drop is simulated and compared with measurements
performed by the GKD - Gebr. Kufferath AG. The simulation results lie within the tolerances of
the measurements. The generation of the structures and the numerical simulations were done at
GKD using the Fraunhofer GeoDict software.

In this paper, an extension to the classical capacitated single-allocation hub location problem is studied in which the size of the hubs is part of the decision making process. For each potential hub a set of capacities is assumed to be available among which one can be chosen. Several formulations are proposed for the problem, which are compared in terms of the bound provided by the linear programming relaxation. Di®erent sets of inequalities are proposed to enhance the models. Several preprocessing tests are also presented with the goal of reducing the size of the models for each particular instance. The results of the computational experiments performed using the proposed models are reported.

In this work we use the Parsimonious Multi–Asset Heston model recently developed in [Dimitroff et al., 2009] at Fraunhofer ITWM, Department Financial Mathematics, Kaiserslautern (Germany) and apply it to Quanto options. We give a summary of the model and its calibration scheme. A suitable transformation of the Quanto option payoff is explained and used to price Quantos within the new framework. Simulated prices are given and compared to market prices and Black–Scholes prices. We find that the new approach underprices the chosen options, but gives better results than the Black–Scholes approach, which is prevailing in the literature on Quanto options.

In nancial mathematics stock prices are usually modelled directly as a result of supply and demand and under the assumption that dividends are paid continuously. In contrast economic theory gives us the dividend discount model assuming that the stock price equals the present value of its future dividends. These two models need not to contradict each other - in their paper Korn and Rogers (2005) introduce a general dividend model preserving the stock price to follow a stochastic process and to be equal to the sum of all its discounted dividends. In this paper we specify the model of Korn and Rogers in a Black-Scholes framework in order to derive a closed-form solution for the pricing of American Call options under the assumption of a known next dividend followed by several stochastic dividend payments during the option's time to maturity.

Home Health Care (HHC) services are becoming increasingly important in Europe’s aging societies. Elderly people have varying degrees of need for assistance and medical treatment. It is advantageous to allow them to live in their own homes as long as possible, since a long-term stay in a nursing home can be much more costly for the social insurance system than a treatment at home providing assistance to the required level. Therefore, HHC services are a cost-effective and flexible instrument in the social system. In Germany, organizations providing HHC services are generally either larger charities with countrywide operations or small private companies offering services only in a city or a rural area. While the former have a hierarchical organizational structure and a large number of employees, the latter typically only have some ten to twenty nurses under contract. The relationship to the patients (“customers”) is often long-term and can last for several years. Therefore acquiring and keeping satisfied customers is crucial for HHC service providers and intensive competition among them is observed.